Sean Callum

Sean Callum (5 May 1836-14 December 1912) was an Irish-born American politician who served as a Democratic New York City alderman from 1870 to 1895.

Biography
Sean Callum was born in Templemore, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1836, the son of Stuart Callum and Mary Darcy. His family brought him to the United States when he was just seven, as the start of the Great Famine led to the family's grain export business collapsing. He was raised on Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan, and he became a member of an Irish Catholic self-defense group, "the Dusters", fighting off Nativist mobs in the neighborhood. Callum was nicknamed "The Battery Park Batterer", earning a reputation as a defender of the Irish community from anti-Catholic nativists. Tammany Hall decided to prop up Callum as one of their aldermanic candidates in 1870, and he easily won election andn re-election for 25 years. Callum was an old-fashioned Irish Catholic who disapproved of the demographic changes in the neighborhood, and he was known for his anti-Asian rhetoric (saying that "yellow Americans" were worse than "Orange Irishmen"), his hatred of Protestants (saying that the Protestant-led Reform movement was no better than the Reformation), and for his special disliking for Italians (saying that Italians constituted another "Moorish" invasion). In 1895, he lost re-election due to the growing influence of the Italian immigrant community in Democratic politics. He retired to the New York suburb of Tenafly, New Jersey and died there in 1912.